Dell World 2012: Dell must look beyond PCs for future growth, claims CEO

Dell's future is in software and systems management, not just PCs, the company's founder and CEO has declared.

Michael Dell made the assertion at Dell World 2012, which is being held in Austin, Texas, this week.

We needed to go beyond the origins of the company in PCs

Dell said customers' utmost concerns today are moving to the cloud, security management, bring your own device, big data, and infrastructure refreshes.

"What we realised...is that having four main products was insufficient for us to be able to address the kinds of challenges that customers were presenting us," Dell told delegates.

"We needed to go beyond the origins of the company in PCs and servers into software and systems management, into services and really build out our portfolio so that we could address those bigger challenges," he added.

However, he was quick to stress the company has no plans to turn its back on hardware completely.

Jeff Clarke, vice chairman and president of global operations and end user computing solutions at Dell, said, despite PC sales falling this year, they are still the device of choice for many users.

"[When I look at] the long term prospects of the PC business, 85 per cent of the world's population has a PC penetration of less than 20 per cent," he said.

"As the middle class grows over the next 20 years from 1.8 billion people to 4.9 billion people, the opportunities for PCs are there," said Clarke.

Clarke also cited the worldwide growth of small businesses as a potential growth source for the PC market.

"I remain bullish on the PC space, I can't quite predict if that is going to change next quarter or next year, but the long term characteristics are still very hopeful for the business," Clarke concluded.